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Authors: Caesar Campbell, Donna Campbell
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reputation as my brothers had, the Gladiators just didn’t have a strong image as a thriving club. I sat back night after night and thought, How can I change the club? To change the club meant I had to change my brothers’ minds, but they were dead set in their idea that all members had to be able to fight.
To a point I agreed with them. I liked a small, tight club. I knew it was about quality and not quantity. But I also realised that for a club to keep going, you had to bring in new blood, and younger blood. You had to have all different sorts of people in your club.
At the next meeting I had one last shot at convincing them. But it was no good. They came up with the same old arguments. They weren’t willing to change. In fact, they wanted to take it a step further and introduce an initiation test: if a bloke wanted to join the club he had to hang round for a bit, and then he had to pick one of the brothers to fight. If he beat the brother, or even held his own, he could become a nominee.
I could see this was just never going to work. I thought, Blokes aren’t gunna want to come to a club where the first thing they’re asked to do is get into a blue with a member, especially when it’s blokes like my brothers.
At the end of the meeting I turned around and said, ‘Well, I’m handing in me colours. Youse can run the club the way youse want.’
A COUPLE of weeks later John Boy approached me. He’d heard that I’d quit the Gladiators and said Jock had sent him to come and see if I’d become a nom for the Comancheros.
‘Will you do it for me? Remember, you gave me your word,’ he said.
Since going to the pub and their club party I’d got to know a few of the Comos and some of them weren’t bad blokes. Snoddy and John Boy and a few of the others seemed really staunch. But, more importantly, I’d given my word. I don’t give it very often, but when I do I keep it.
So I said, ‘Yeah, all right, I’ll join youse.’
Not long afterwards I ran into Guitar and he said, ‘I heard you left the Gladiators.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Any chance you coming over to the Angels?’
‘I would’ve loved to but you’re a few weeks too late.’
‘Whaddya mean?’
‘I’m a nom for the Comancheros.’
‘Ah, fuck! I was outta town, I only just heard that you’d left the Gladiators.’
‘Well if you’d come and asked me before John Boy I’d have went with ya.’
But it was too late. I owed John Boy and I’d given him my word. I packed away my Gladiators vest and got a new one with the word Nominee written on it. And I became a Como.
CHAPTER 4
J ock Ross had started the Comancheros in 1966, naming the club after a John Wayne film of the same name. In the film, the Comancheros were a gang of white renegade whiskey- and gun-runners with a secret Mexican hideout. By the time I joined up in August 1978, Jock Ross’s Comancheros were an outlaw motorcycle club of thirteen blokes who owned Parramatta, the heart of Sydney’s west. With no clubhouse, the members based themselves at the Ermington Hotel, on the corner of Victoria and Silver-water roads.
I’d gone from being the president of my own club to a lowly nominee. Being a nominee meant you were there to watch, and to do what you were told. You weren’t included in meetings, your opinion wasn’t taken into account, and you were always on call so that if there was a shitty job that needed doing, you were available to do it. I watched the other noms being sent on bike watch, building fences, mowing lawns for members – but the funny thing was that I wasn’t asked to do any of that. I was being treated more like a member. Maybe they were just respecting my previous role with the Gladiators, but I had a sense that there was more to it than that.
M E AND Donna moved into a house on the corner of Frederick Street and Liverpool Road, Ashfield, coincidentally the same house where I’d gone to my first Comanchero party. And late in 1978 I decided it was
To a point I agreed with them. I liked a small, tight club. I knew it was about quality and not quantity. But I also realised that for a club to keep going, you had to bring in new blood, and younger blood. You had to have all different sorts of people in your club.
At the next meeting I had one last shot at convincing them. But it was no good. They came up with the same old arguments. They weren’t willing to change. In fact, they wanted to take it a step further and introduce an initiation test: if a bloke wanted to join the club he had to hang round for a bit, and then he had to pick one of the brothers to fight. If he beat the brother, or even held his own, he could become a nominee.
I could see this was just never going to work. I thought, Blokes aren’t gunna want to come to a club where the first thing they’re asked to do is get into a blue with a member, especially when it’s blokes like my brothers.
At the end of the meeting I turned around and said, ‘Well, I’m handing in me colours. Youse can run the club the way youse want.’
A COUPLE of weeks later John Boy approached me. He’d heard that I’d quit the Gladiators and said Jock had sent him to come and see if I’d become a nom for the Comancheros.
‘Will you do it for me? Remember, you gave me your word,’ he said.
Since going to the pub and their club party I’d got to know a few of the Comos and some of them weren’t bad blokes. Snoddy and John Boy and a few of the others seemed really staunch. But, more importantly, I’d given my word. I don’t give it very often, but when I do I keep it.
So I said, ‘Yeah, all right, I’ll join youse.’
Not long afterwards I ran into Guitar and he said, ‘I heard you left the Gladiators.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Any chance you coming over to the Angels?’
‘I would’ve loved to but you’re a few weeks too late.’
‘Whaddya mean?’
‘I’m a nom for the Comancheros.’
‘Ah, fuck! I was outta town, I only just heard that you’d left the Gladiators.’
‘Well if you’d come and asked me before John Boy I’d have went with ya.’
But it was too late. I owed John Boy and I’d given him my word. I packed away my Gladiators vest and got a new one with the word Nominee written on it. And I became a Como.
CHAPTER 4
J ock Ross had started the Comancheros in 1966, naming the club after a John Wayne film of the same name. In the film, the Comancheros were a gang of white renegade whiskey- and gun-runners with a secret Mexican hideout. By the time I joined up in August 1978, Jock Ross’s Comancheros were an outlaw motorcycle club of thirteen blokes who owned Parramatta, the heart of Sydney’s west. With no clubhouse, the members based themselves at the Ermington Hotel, on the corner of Victoria and Silver-water roads.
I’d gone from being the president of my own club to a lowly nominee. Being a nominee meant you were there to watch, and to do what you were told. You weren’t included in meetings, your opinion wasn’t taken into account, and you were always on call so that if there was a shitty job that needed doing, you were available to do it. I watched the other noms being sent on bike watch, building fences, mowing lawns for members – but the funny thing was that I wasn’t asked to do any of that. I was being treated more like a member. Maybe they were just respecting my previous role with the Gladiators, but I had a sense that there was more to it than that.
M E AND Donna moved into a house on the corner of Frederick Street and Liverpool Road, Ashfield, coincidentally the same house where I’d gone to my first Comanchero party. And late in 1978 I decided it was
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